Karthika Sakthivel

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Project 560, will involve mapping Cubbon Park through recorded interviews, stored in an interactive sonic picnic blanket that will be activated through sonic picnic events in the park. Karthika Sakthivel is the  Project Coordinator for this project. 

Karthika Sakthivel is a Bangalore-based media artist and storyteller. She situates her work at the intersection of art and technology. Her practice involves crafting interactive and immersive experiences that are thought-provoking, through the act of storytelling in an embodied manner. Karthika has an MA in Digital Direction from Royal College of Art, London. She also did an exchange semester at École supérieure d’art et de design d’Orléans in 2016, while she was a student at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design & Technology. Karthika has showcased her immersive installations in different exhibitions and venues in India and abroad, including The British Library, The Royal Academy, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Given her experience, Karthika is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

The project titled Sonic Picnics (Cubbon Edition) will create sonic picnic events with an interactive picnic blanket as a repository of audio tales recorded in Cubbon Park. The art project will sonically reimagine the historical, contemporary and future narratives of Cubbon Park by inviting the community to embark on a sensory journey through the heart of Bangalore. The tactile design of the interactive sonic picnic blanket will be carefully sewn together as a multi-sensory experience, bringing together voices, textural tones, threads and technology. During the sonic picnic events, the picnic blanket will transform into a smart textile with a microcontroller and a bare conductive touch module beneath its surface, which will be concealed with a circuit woven from conductive fabric, conductive thread and wires. Each patchwork piece on the surface of the blanket that is illustrated by workshop participants acts as a portal to trigger an associated audio story when touched. The collaborators in the project will be Swathi Kumar (Bangalore-based artist, architect, designer and founder-director of Oorkathe), and Navya Sah (Bangalore-based filmmaker). The project coordinator will also reach out to groups like Cubbon Reads and Bahutva Karnataka for potential collaborations. 

The outcomes of the project would be recorded interview audio clips, sonic picnic events, and the sonic picnic blanket. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the audio clips, photographs, and audio-visual documentation of the Sonic Picnic events.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Project 560 programme in the manner in which it tries to foreground participatory art at the heart of the city through storytelling, activated through mediatic immersion, particularly sonic experiences, as a counterpoint to the primacy of visuality in urban art.  

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from BNP Paribas India Foundation.